WHAT is wrong with not a lot happening?
In a world of rolling news and social media and instant responses, it seems as if the entire rhythm of life is on fast forward. But what is wrong with not a lot and nothing much and this and that?
I was in a pub recently. It was in a working-class area of the city and I recognised a lot of those streets and I listened to the Cork voices and I knew where I was and I thought to myself that I come from a place just like this. Over the other side of the sea but just like this.
Tight inner-city streets, most people knowing each other, people coming in straight from work for a pint, the barmaid laughing with some old fella in a way that suggests she does that most days, a child sipping a glass of orange.
I recognised it even though I’d never been in there before. Just an ordinary pub in an ordinary place. A backstreet pub in a backstreet place.
Standing at the bar, though, I looked up and around, and it wasn’t a particularly big place, and I counted eleven mounted televisions on the walls.
The sound was off but the pictures were still transmitting and the world was right up there on the screens and there was a lot happening. Continuously and repetitively.
No one seemed to be watching them but they were there all the same, reminding us that there was a lot happening and we shouldn’t forget that. There was stuff happening in football, politics and entertainment, and what were we thinking to come here and think we might not have to know about it?
So, yes, I did recognise the place but I couldn’t help thinking that places like this might once have had a slot machine in the corner with a few flashing lights, but primarily they used to be places where you could sit at a table and talk and drink or just enjoy not a lot happening.
And is this somehow better?
If I go out for a walk now and go somewhere I’m lucky enough to be able to get to — the woods or the coast — and just walk and listen to the wind and the birds and see the year turning, should I take a photograph? Should I take a photograph and upload it to some social media platform so that other people can respond and assure me that it must be beautiful and lucky me and good luck to you and enjoy being out in nature?
I could even hashtag it #nature or #livinginthemoment or #meandthewaves. All whilst looking at my screen.
When did the extraordinary — constantly being engaged with the world and everything happening — become so ordinary? And when did the ordinary — taking a walk, having a think, looking at the sky — become so extraordinary?
When did we become so busy remarking on everything, trivial or otherwise, that the remarkable became just another thing and the everyday remarkable?
There is a place I’m lucky enough to go to. I don’t get there often, maybe three or four times a year, but I still love it. I’ve been going there since I was a kid.
When I’m sitting there, looking out at the waves and listening to the percussion of the water against the rocks and watching the birds along the cliffs, I do nothing else. I think about everything and nothing.
It’s a get-away-from-it-all place and that’s what I do there.
Not a lot happens there. In fact, in all the years I’ve been going there, nothing has ever happened there. Well, everything is happening there too — the sea and the wildlife and the weather — but nothing that needs reporting back on. Nothing that needs commenting upon.
During the madness of the Celtic Tiger years, it felt at times that going for a simple walk was a political act of rebellion. Why are you walking on a simple country lane when you should be shopping, putting up decking around the conservatory or flying to New York for the weekend?
The Celtic Tiger’s well and truly gone and now it’s slightly different. It’s not the walk that is the act of rebellion. It’s the not photographing it, posting it, hashtagging it or waiting for the comments on it.
And so, is that somehow better?
See More: England, Ireland, Social Media
